Hints and Winks
by DreamOrNightmare
Summary: Being the Mad Hatter, confessing your love to a woman is difficult. Especially if the woman is a very clueless Alice. Halice fluffiness. Snippet-ish.


_"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." - Marilyn Monroe_

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**A/N: **Yesh, I've got bitten by the _Johnny Depp_ bug. I love Johnny, he makes the cutest Mad Hatter. :3

Please do read and enjoy! c; I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing this.

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"Alice, can't you stay a _tad_ longer?"

Tarrant asked, his typical uplifting voice shriveled to no more than a timid rasp. A glint of hope managed to strain his vocal cords, his last words breaking with the naïve faith that _this time_ she would listen to him and stay. It was a slurvish thought, but he couldn't help it. He had grown too fond of this girl to watch her leave so soon.

Swiveling her thin body around, Alice passed him a shy lopsided grin, though her eyes couldn't shield her true grief.

Those wide brown eyes, he had grown quite familiar with, had hardened with maturity of noble woman. No longer capable of holding such innocent absurdity like the child he first met nineteen years ago. The brims of her eyes wilted slightly in a modest frown, her dark orbs darting back and forth to the door that preceded to Upperland then to his eyes, questioning him mutely. Blonde strands fell in unruly waves below her small waist, enveloping around her petite frame that Time had crafted himself. Indeed,Time had grown a liking to her. The blue dress she always wore when she came to visit him—erm, he meant _them_—was now layered with dirt and grass stains, tattered and torn from the games and adventures they played within her short visit. Yet despite her frayed appearance, she never ceased to make his throat taut with a foreign emotion that threatened to leak out of his closed lips.

"Tarrant," she murmured, he acknowledged how it panged her eyes to say his name. "I—I can't."

The red smile that was warming up to his lips drooped ever so slightly at the corners. A cold, hollow feeling swept over his rigid muscles causing the colorful rings around his eyes to turn a hue too dark for Alice's preference. It was misery. A bitter, ugly feeling. He didn't like that feeling. But without her coaxing words, he didn't put a fight. It often consumed him when she left.

She has declined his request for the _fifth _time.

The pitiful attempts he had sufficed within her previous visits in an effort to persuade to her stay, all falling flat with her soft reluctant phrase of 'I can't.' Exhaling a heavy breath, venting all his repressed frustration along with it, he dropped his gaze to the damp ground. Oddly, he couldn't bring himself to look at Alice, fearing he would do something out of order.

"Oh," he squeaked, barely able to push the single syllable off his suddenly numb tongue.

Sensing his anguish, her fingers trailed to his shoulder in a hesitant attempt of reassurance. Her hand wavered, not quite sure whether to leave her hand on his shoulder or to pull away. "Don't worry, I'll be back before you know it," she muttered, trying her best to soothe her friend with a strained smile painted lovingly on her gentle face.

But it only strengthened the despair of knowing that as soon as she departed, he would miss her dearly.

He endeavored to return her smile, to make her feel happy, to make her feel relieved, to deceive her into thinking he was alright when he wasn't, but it fell less than half way trying. The wind blew impatiently, running through Tarrant's tangled, orange-dyed locks, beckoning him to leave her, but he ignored the persisting requests and stared holes in the moist ground. A nerve-wracking silence soon acquainted the distance between them, not even the roses' constant prattle could be heard, they were all too intrigued by the situation before them to even mumble a mere word. Pulling on a grin, he forced himself to look at Alice with jaunty eyes, despite the thoughts coursing through his psychotic mind ushering him to hide under a rock.

"Best be on your way then." He replied, the flow of his words falling smoothly from his tongue with a practiced, cheerful tone, despite the false smile growing slack on his lips.

Untidy yellow hair bounced in wild spirals as she nodded her head. Although, she didn't seem quite convinced. Her eyes drifted, wavering, to the door. Then her brown doe eyes would look upon him, confused. Despite the brave, passive front he planted as a façade, he grimaced when sensed the dense weight of Alice's quizzical stare. He didn't want Alice to leave. At least, _not yet. _If he was compelled to, he would whine like a _lil' lass _and beg at her ankles until she corresponded with his terms. The thought was tossed around his brain for a short while. Perhaps he should try to that _tactic_? Thick brows crinkling, he repressed a dreary sigh. _Time _was right. He had grown _too _fond of this girl.

But fondness was a _harmless_ emotion. It was a feeling shared upon acquaintances. It was a _nice _feeling—not a _bitter, ugly _feeling.

Much to his unwillingness, he watched as Alice made a move for the door. Her white and black boots shuffled amidst the pane of matted and dying grass, each soft tread shooting a spasm of discomfort to his pulsing heart.

Each soft tread a step closer to the entry that led her astray from him.

He tried to look away, he tried to distract his eyes with something else, but Alice was, naturally, magnetic. _Yes, _he had taken note from the very beginning that the _lad _harbored a unique, _odd_ fragment that enticed him. _What could it be? _It was distinct from the first moment they met glances that, by whim, he was destined to be her friend. _Perchance she truly was as bonkers as she had foretold, for only the mad understood the mad. _Perceived through_ her_ eyes as the wryly smiling man who had assisted her, guiding her in the right directions, often lending her hasty words of encouragement when she was stuck in sticky scenarios, but did she perceive him as anything more?

_He didn't have the slightest idea. _

Without a tick's acknowledgement, Alice turned on her heels, the tarnished hem of her dress spiraling in an unexpected movement.

Tarrant choked out a muffled gasp as he felt abrupt weight slam against his chest, knocking him off balance for a measly moment. He felt constricting, warm pressure enfold him, enclosing him in its suffocating heat. Instinctively, he tried to wiggle out of the warmth's tightening hold, but something prevented him to do so. It took a moment for his mind to register what was _actually_ happening.

Then he saw Alice. Her narrow form was craned against him. Her frail arms enwrapping him with this alien warmth, her pale, delicate face burrowed in his chest as if she were attempting to veil herself from him. He jerked his head when he felt rigid, trembling hands dig into his lower back, stubbornly refusing to comply with his squirms. Tarrant's composed features evidently softened, his vivid emerald eyes fading to a milder tint, when he caught a glimpse of Alice's moistened eyes. In a comforting motion, his arms responded, encircling her self-consciously, for it was the first time he ever held a woman like this.

"_You've completely gone bonkers."_ He whispered in her tangled mass of yellow hair.

He was wrong. Fondness _wasn't_ harmless. It was very much dangerous. In the beginning, its light and simple like the chatter shared among two, young lovers, then the lyrics slowly distort and crumple—leaving only a dark, thick sheet of hollowness, and realization.

Realization that one's first love has just left him.

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**A/N: **Just to be frank, I sorta toyed with imagination with this one. Alice is a tad older (to be specific she's 26 years old, hence Tarrant's mention of knowing her for 19 years… and she was 7 when she first went to Wonderland and 19 in her second trip… so yeah, just do the math and it'll make sense. :D) and I also decided to make it her 5th visit to Wonderland. I hope that clears so things up, if you're confused. No humor yet, but there will be soon to come!

Reviews would be very much appreciated! c: I'm still kinda hesitate on whether or not I should continue this.

Thanks for reading! ^-^

…Btw, have you noticed that Hatter occasionally refers Alice to _him _and _lad_? xD

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, it all rightfully belongs to Lewis Carroll.


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